The Forest
by Okusway
Summary: A compilation on short thriller stories with some romance.


The Forest.

Kiyomaro got out of the van that they have rented and went directly to check in until the rest of the alliance arrived. He saw Elle and Megumi, who were a bit worried, discuss something in a very low voice until Megumi approached.

― Is Sherry already here?

—No, she's on her way.

The women exchanged glances.

—Is there something going on? — Kiyomaro asked.

—Uh…could you give us her number? I need to talk to her.

Kiyomaro agreed and watched them walk away.

Apollo pulled out at a gas station. Sherry saw that she had a couple of missed calls but she ignored them. They were all from an unknown number. But while she was still holding her cellphone, she got another call. After a few seconds, she picked up without saying anything.

—Sherry? —Megumi said.

—Who is this? —Sherry asked in a pretty serious tone.

Apollo heard her change the tone of her voice from one moment to a smoother one and enter the store. While she was wandering around the place, Sherry took a couple of snacks and tampons that Megumi had just asked for. That gas station was miles from the last house they had seen and soon they would discover that it was also miles away from the next. There weren't many people in the cafeteria, two or three men seemed to be truck drivers. At a table, in an almost hidden corner, there was a lonely man who suspiciously looked away when Sherry stared at him. This made her frown. Kiyomaro had asked them to pay attention to the people they could find on their way to the hotel, since it was possible that the enemies they were trying to find had not yet met completely. If they found someone on the way, they would find it easier to chase them to their destination and wait until they meet their partners rather than find them when they were all together and hidden.

Brago said he didn't feel the presence of any demons nearby. Schneider agreed. In the end, they drove straight to the accommodation without chasing anyone.

Once there, the girls met in their apartment and agreed to go to the pool. Elle hesitated a bit but finally decided to go.

During lunch, Kiyomaro announced that the next day they would go to the Mount Fuji and that if someone wanted to stay there, they could do it. Apollo showed a lot of enthusiasm. Li-en, who had read about paranormal stories that took place nearby, was also excited. Parco was confused but determined to go. Sunbeam asked Elle if she wanted to go and she only said that if they went to Aokigahara, she would bring a rosary.

Dufort said he would think about it. In the afternoon, Zeon and Kiyomaro talked with him.

"Dufort," Zeon said, "it is not an option for us to stay at the hotel."

"We will go to Aokigahara. Today I didn't want to say it so as not to scare someone. You have to go but you can stay on the safe paths and wait there with Gash and Zeon. If it's true that there are evil spirits nearby, we don't want them near Gash."

\- Why can Sherry stay but I can't? We are supposed to have a similar hierarchy.

"Aokigahara is known to have been the center of thousands of suicides and Sherry has a dark past that involves some of that."

Dufort reluctantly agreed to go, but said he would not go beyond the safe areas.

The next day, Kiyomaro announced that he would divide the members into pairs to enter the forest. Due to the myths about darker demons that inhabited the place and tried to deceive the people who entered, and the stories of the Mamodo world, in which it was said that these spirits tried to possess the mamodos, they decided that the latter would not enter. They would stay on the safe roads waiting for their book keepers to come back.

Sherry took Reira to the bathroom before Kiyo appointed the couples.

"She leaves because she's afraid," Brago said.

"It's not a very happy place," Kiyomaro replied.

"She had a dream a few days ago, in which she found a shadow or something that was chasing her from inside of the forest to one of the safe paths. Do you think you can go with her?

"Sure," Kiyo said.

Kiyo divided his friends into pairs and waited for Sherry; When she came back and left Reira with Gashu and the others, Kiyo happily informed her that they would be partners and that nothing bad would happen. Before losing the demons of sight, Sherry turned around and saw that Brago was slightly smiling at her.

"If we find weird objects along the way, you don't have to go on. You can wait for me in a safe place."

\- What if we found a body?

"If I see it from afar, I'll ask you to go back, I don't want you to see that. Brago told me that you had a dream in which something from the forest was following you. I understand that because of the… events that have taken place for centuries here, the forest may be something terrifying to you, but I don't think we will find anything, the rangers, the police and volunteer teams are responsible for cleaning the area "Kiyo said. and then he cleared his throat. Maybe it's an idea or fear that your unconscious mind conserves and transforms into a shadow that haunts you from within the forest, like ... the soul of someone who died here, maybe. Is it something like this?

Sherry said it was possible, that he did not look like a real person, but merely a shadowy figure that followed them. It was then that Kiyo noticed something strange.

\- He followed "us"? You and who else?

Sherry looked at him significantly. Kiyo was silent for a few seconds.

-Yes, I know. Brago did it to annoy me.

Kiyo then remembered Brago's strange smile and realized why he had seemed malicious at the time.

—But if he knows that you have a history with this, that the atmosphere and the forest's events in general are related to something that happened to you…

"That doesn't bother me anymore," Sherry interrupted. She explained that this was buried in the past, that she had understood many things since then and that nothing that had happened to her in all the years that followed that horrible night had made her want to do it again, but rather quite the opposite. If problems pushed her back, she pushed back harder.

"I don't tell people that I wanted to kill myself because I don't want them to pity me like you are doing right now, Brago understands that, he understands it so well that he even dares to joke about things like this, I know that nothing will happen to us, I don't have a bad feeling, but anyway, that shadow begins to follow us after something determined happens, and it is very difficult for that to happen in real life.

Kiyomaro nodded and apologized.

The roads that were initially open began to close. Soon after walking into the forest, they were out of signal. They both knew this would happen, so they didn't worry too much about it. As they walked in deeper in the forest, they could see more and more thin trees with overly exposed roots. Kiyo thought that they would become detached at any moment and start walking, but he only said they were on volcanic soil. Soon they stopped listening to noises other than those coming from their own steps and breathing; Although she didn't say anything, this bothered Sherry. Kiyomaro noticed that suddenly, the atmosphere had become hostile against them, or at least against him. He felt that he was not welcome in that place, and all the peace and quiet that other forest visitors had manifested feeling in it, was hard for Kiyo to imagine. He did not see the forest as a source of tranquility that numbed people and led them to end their problems, but as – as the name pointed out - a sea of trees with eyes and voices that shouted terrible things. He tried to calm down after tripping over a rock and remain almost sunk between two others. Sherry had already asked him if he was alright a couple of times. Maybe it all had to do with the girl's dream.

Once he had walked into the fourth spider web and had tripped over a red ribbon that crossed along a winding road, Kiyomaro asked Sherry to take a break.

He stopped walking and looked around for something to sit on. The only thick enough fallen logs were covered with mold. Sherry stood beside him and asked if he was okay again. Kiyo drank some water and said yes.

"I just don't like being here. I don't see anything peaceful about this place."

"Neither do I, but it's not as bad as I thought. For a while I was fascinated with this place; maybe the forest was just trying to seduce me and swallow me " Sherry laughed. Kiyomaro considered that possibility, without communicating it to his partner— "but after a while everything that had to do with Aokigahara began to terrify me, I think it coincided with the moment in which I decided to conscience, that I really wanted to live. Then the forest and other places that used to provoke me "l'appel du vide" became threatening. As if with that decision I had given dangerous situations and places a certain personality and they had gotten angry with me for not seeing them attractive enough to end my life anymore. I think that's why I had that dream: a ghost of some suicidal or my own desire, now twisted, because you know that the unconscious mind does not eliminate anything (the ideas mutate, but never disappear) leaves the forest to chase me, because the thought is still there, deep down, but now I run away from it."

Kiyo reflected on the woman's words for a while and then said: - In the dream, what happens before the shadow chases us? You said something specific and unlikely happens.

Sherry, who had apprehended Japanese customs, usually avoided looking her local interlocutors in the eye, however, she stared at Kiyo and simply said, "We stop." This caused a certain impact on Kiyomaro, who immediately stoop up again and starting moving, removing branches and cobwebs from his face. So, they walked for a while, until Kiyo noticed that his compass was not working properly. At that point, he thought about how many kilometers inside the forest they were and recalled that Sherry said the forest was trying to swallow her. Kiyo thought that, if that was the case, it had already swallowed both of them a while ago. He wished he had stayed with the others on the safe roads. His nerves were only increasing, as the road became more and more difficult to walk and tangled. They found obstacles at every moment, too many rocks, some of them unstable, branches permanently at the height of their faces, the ground was quite slippery and to add more restlessness to the environment, from time to time they found colored ribbons that went deeper into the heart of the forest. Kiyomaro knew that if they followed any of these, they would find a corpse. Fortunately, neither he nor Sherry proposed to follow them.

After a while, Kiyomaro could not continue walking, each step meant a stumble, a blow or a scratch. He stopped again and thought about returning, he didn't care that he couldn't finish the mission, he just needed to get out of there immediately,

but he did not have enough strength to face the way back, more than an hour ago he had stopped putting signs on the trees and taking pictures. Kiyo hoped that Sherry had been paying more attention than he did.

One more step and it happened. Kiyo did not notice it immediately, but ten minutes later, when he fell between two rocks, Sherry did.

\- What is that on your face? – Sherry said. And she reached over extending her right hand towards Kiyomaro's face. He pulled away a little, but Sherry took him by the chin with her other hand and told him still while inspecting the wound: a not too deep horizontal cut on his forehead that was beginning to heal. It must have been a branch.

At that moment, she could also notice that Kiyo looked too pale and agitated.

"It's nothing," she said to calm him. It is already healing. She helped him free himself from the rocks and removed some plants that had become entangled in his shoes. Kiyomaro had been silent for more than an hour. -You don't believe in those stories, right? Nothing will leave the forest to chase us.

Kiyomaro shook his head.

The forest no longer caused anything in Sherry, not even the memory of her dream could scare her. In fact, she had been able to explain it to herself, it was only a convenient capsule situation that now, incredibly, was being replicated with slight differences in real life. She thought that in his dream, Kiyomaro didn't look restless, unlike her. She recalled the events that had made her little soul tremble only a few months ago and suddenly, she felt lonely again, very lonely. She sighed and thought again about the dream to forget about the thoughts that had been weaving a dense web on her pillow at night. For the first time she considered that her unconscious mind might be trying to protect her from those invasive thoughts.

Sherry asked Kiyo to stop.

\- Are you sure? I don't see any safe road to run near, nor Apollo.

Sherry laughed very low and said: - Don't be so afraid. Wanna know what happened before we took it off?

Kiyo turned around to face her, a little uncertain of wanting to know the answer. Any of them said anything for a couple of seconds.

—I kissed you softly.

Kiyo remained silent for another second and then said: "I have seen the French give one another the famous bisou out of nowhere, not only when they greet each other, I don't think ... I understand it very well."

"It wasn't like that. I mean, it wasn't in that way, "Sherry replied. Kiyo wondered why she didn't continue speaking Japanese, a scene came to his mind in which the woman had explicitly asked him to communicate completely in Japanese. "Then I passed by your side and started walking my way out, a few seconds later, the shadow came out of nowhere and we just ran."

Kiyomaro felt confused and believed for an instant that all of this was just a dream within another dream, which in parts had become a nightmare, he believed he had even visualized the shadow himself.

Sherry tried to smile but could only articulate a strange grimace, at that moment, she thought that if she laughed, her laugh would sound too fake.

Suddenly, she heard something. The forest that, until that moment, had been silent began to produce the normal sounds of falling leaves, or shaking with an almost imperceptible breeze, of insects and some small animals. It no longer seemed oppressive. Then Sherry could laugh and looked at Kiyo, who was still taciturn. He looked at her too because he felt it had been too long since Sherry had spoken so that her last words had any relation to what was funny to her at that moment. Sherry approached and kissed him gently on the lips, resting one of her hands on Kiyo's neck for a second. Then she broke the kiss and continued walking. He eventually followed her. As it had happened in the dream. To their surprise, they soon found a safe path where Schneider and Kanchome were. Sherry felt nervous, but she thought that with this thought she would supplant all the others that made stay up at night. For a couple of days she felt so ashamed that she managed to forget all the problems that worried her. Kiyomaro, on the other hand, tried to act normal, but his teammates soon noticed that he was more nervous than usual.


End file.
